Continuing on from yesterday’s post. The Buda Castle grounds are very extensive and offer some spectacular vantage points for great photos. The original castle was built around 1000 AD and barely withstood the Mongol invasion a couple of hundred years later. Along came the Renaissance and the enlightened King of the time, Matthias Corvinus, built a Renaissance style palace along with substantial art on the site of the castle. Unfortunately, during the Turkish occupation of Hungary (1541-1686), the palace was not occupied and used as an ammunition dump. This blew up and destroyed the original castle. The castle was rebuilt by Maria Teresa in the 18th Century and again after WW2. You can see the various layers of the original structures if you look closely.

See the buttress in the center of the photo? You can go out on that and take spectacular photos up and down the Danube.

There is also a tower at the far end and if you go down, the entrance to the museum.

After you finish with Buda Castle, you can explore the rest of the Castle Hill which contains some Government buildings being renovated to be the Prime Minister’s offices and a quaint little town where we had the best gelato of our trip, sorry didn’t get the name.

Here is a map that give you an idea of the layout of Castle Hill.

Then you reach the Matthias Cathedral (remember him?) which is really spectacular and was renovated in the early 20th Century.

We were lucky and arrived when they had a booksellers event along with live music playing.

In back of the cathedral is the Fishermen’s Bastion. Constructed over 100 years ago, it is so named because that part of the wall was defended by fishermen during the Mongol invasion. It is really beautiful both from the cathedral side and from the bottom of the hill. This is a good place to walk down if you decide you want to go back to town.

There was even a little renaissance festival going on. They certainly fit in with the surroundings!

That wraps up Castle Hill which should be considered a “must see” to anyone visiting Budapest. I’ll leave you with an old picture of what Castle Hill looked like a few hundreds years ago.